History of Computers and the Birth of the Internet

I've been reading "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" by Hafner&Lyon which tells the story of ARPA and how the network to connect all the different mainframes in universities came to being, which then would be the foundation of the Internet. It's written in a novel fashion and once you start flipping the pages it's hard to put it down!

There are mentions of many of the first huge computing machines that were built in various Universities and Corporations, such as the TX-2 in MIT Lincoln Labs, Q-32 that was transferred by the Airforce from SDC to ARPA, etc. So being the researcher I am :) I had to track these beasts and learn more about them. I shall write a separate article about these in the near future.

Computer History Museum in California (History Timeline)

CCIE Preparation, devices to accumulate for a home lab

This is a WIP entry that I'll use to compile a list of useful devices/information for my future CCIE lab preperation

ISDN Simulator B-LinkU has 2 ports that you can connect to using U or S/T interface.

2520 Series Multiport routers, for use as Frame Relay switch, ISDN cloud.

Cisco Router boot configuration

File Systems:
system: (RAM, where running-config is kept)
nvram: (NVRAM, where startup-config is saved)
bootflash: (Internal Flash memory)
slot0: (First PCMCIA slot)
slot1: (Second PCMCIA slot)

Copying:
#copy ftp: system:running-config
#copy ncp: system:running-config
#copy tftp: system:running-config

#copy ftp: nvram:startup-config
#copy rcp: nvram:startup-config
#copy tftp: nvram:startup-config

#copy system:running-config nvram:startup-config

Booting:

#show bootvar (verify the contents of the CONFIG_FILE environment variable.)
#boot config dest-flash-url (Set the CONFIG_FILE environment variable.)

#boot network ftp:[[[//[username[:password]@]location]/directory]
/filename]
#boot network rcp:[[[//[username@]location]/directory]/filename]
#boot network tftp:[[[//location]/directory]/filename]
#service config (Enable the router to download config-files at startup)

#boot system

Other Useful commands:
#service compress-config
#boot buffersize bytes (The buffer that holds the configuration file is usually the size of NVRAM. Larger configurations need larger buffers. )
(config)#config-register value
#dir [flash-filesystem:]

Examples
#copy system:running-config tftp://172.16.1.130/istanbul-config
#copy system:running-config ftp://netadmin1:mypass@172.16.101.101/Ankara-config
#copy rcp://netadmin1@172.16.101.101/host1-confg system:running-config
#copy slot0:4:ios-upgrade-1 nvram:startup-config


Ref: Rebooting and Reloading - Configuring Image Loading Characteristics @ Cisco
Cisco IOS Conf. Fundamentals Command Reference Boot Commands

GRE over IPsec in a Hub-Spoke Topology w/ EIGRP (Lab) #2

Ok this is the enhanced version of the previous GRE lab I've posted.
We've decided to encrypt and secure all communications between our HQ and Branches.
As previously noted we needed GRE to run a dynamic routing protocol (EIGRP) between our networks. So here we implement an IPsec GRE tunnel that will encrypt all traffic including the multicast EIGRP messaging.

Download Project files for GNS3.